Forget About Organization, Do It For Yourself

It may sound a bit greedy, but sometimes it is the only way to become the happiest designer in your company.

Designing for a company for seven years is a thing I never really dreamt of. My dream was to be a successful terpsichorean, a jazz dancer to be exact, performing regularly in the hazy and busy theatres of Paris. Yet for some reason, that dream faded and I ended up slaving eight hours a day for a design firm. And that unaccomplished dream filled my whole seven years, mainly every time I was experiencing a major designers block, whenever I couldnt think of a design for a certain project. Yet that dream kept me going; it fueled my boring designing career, and it literally pushed me to my limits.

Frankly speaking, the terpsichorean dream is over. I know it is not for me. My jazz moves have already faded, and my 47-year-old bones clearly feel that a single syncopated step would send it crashing, like a derailed science project. And I dont want to see Sir Duke Ellington and Sir John Coltrane rise from their graves just to lambaste my footsteps and reintroduce me to the rudiments of the high class art form.

Owning your own creative process

Design books are never tired of saying that commercial designers are only hired drafters, ones that design with a clients preference in mind, and never start the creative process without it. For a time (and for technical reasons) I forced myself to believe it. I have never started a creative process (and even design process) without the clients preference in mind. I have always included their presence in my works and submitted to them 100% figuratively and literally. There were also times when I needed to give them an awful, inartistic design because that was what they wanted.

Creative process is a personal matter, and no organization and client preference could provide it you. Therefore, the creator and the doer of the creative process (designers) should dwell solely into the depths of his own artistry

After seven long years, I realized that I have been only designing for my company (for the entire organization that gave me the cyclical paycheck I needed every month) and not for myself. Like what I have said, it may sound a bit greedy and self-serving, but I have this feeling (a newborn belief) that every artist- and designer and writershould do their job for themselves. Every working designer should have a goal of gaining satisfaction while doing their jobs, so they will end up not feeling just the success of the finished work but the self-satisfaction as well.

Although clients preference is still a need to deliver a successful commercial web design project, what designers have to do is to include their hearts in the smallest element of their work.

Integrating your dream, heart, and passion to your work is like aiming for a finished web design product that is artistically yours